Art and Revolution in Latin America

This course combines the disciplines of history and art to consider the ways in which artists participated in and created a visual analogue to the political and social transformations wrought by successful revolutions in Latin America. The interaction of art and revolution in Mexico (from the late nineteenth-century to the 1940s) forms the foundation of the course. Its revolution (1910-1920) produced the most successful, vibrant, and internationally recognized artistic formation of national identity of the last century. The final third of the course analyzes and compares the similarity explosive changes that occur in revolutionary Cuba from 1959 and in Nicaragua from 1979-1990. These three revolutions demonstrate a connection between art and politics to a rare degree, as artistic expression (painting, prints, photography, and architecture) become fundamental to both creating, reflecting, and challenging the new order.